


perseus pending

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Everybody Lives, F/M, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2441072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I meant what I said, you know. About you being the bravest of them all.”</p><p>“Not brave enough to name our son after, apparently”, you joke, and the resultant flash in her eyes means that you’ve made a mistake. You remember that same glint in silver eyes, so unlike hers, years and years before, when your world was hemmed in by walls of stone and red and gold hangings.</p><p>“Edward Remus Lupin.” She says, smiling softly. “In the hopes that he’ll always find his way home.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	perseus pending

**Author's Note:**

> My half of a fic/art trade between myself and nothaljordan on tumblr!
> 
> The art can be found here (http://tick-tack-trikey.tumblr.com/post/100455905384/teddy-lupin-for-punkrockbadger-in-trade-for-an) on nothaljordan's art blog, which is definitely worth following.

[July 29th, 1997]

Dora smells different.

It’s the first thing you notice, when you wake in the morning to her fingertips tracing the scars on your face. Her smile seems a little brighter, somehow, and you doubt she can tell that she’s changed in any way at all. But it doesn’t matter, this subtle sweet smell edging its way into the peculiar mix of danger, smoke and roses that is Dora, and you bury your face into the curve of her neck.

“Morning, Rem.” She runs her fingers through your too long hair and you lazily throw an arm over her waist. Your scars stand out in sharp relief, nothing like the soft skin revealed by the way her t-shirt rides up, and you wonder that maybe the fact that you are so incredibly different is what brings you together. She tugs at your earlobe until you look up and smiles. “You’re thinking too hard, love.”

“Yeah.” You grin, and it comes easily. “Good thing I’ve got you to stop me.”

“Good thing.” She presses a kiss to your forehead before sliding out of bed, and you lose yourself in the swing of her hips before tumbling out of bed yourself.

There are jobs to be done and missions to be taken, and there is no time to lose. Because that’s what it always comes down to, and nobody ever quite gets enough.

* * *

[August 14th, 1997]

“When this is all over, we’ll take a week off. Just us. Go somewhere.” You look to Dora uncertainly. “You and me.”

“Somewhere with sun”, she agrees, eyes bright as her hands wave wildly. It reminds you of Sirius, you muse, this inability to be contained, but Dora is in a league of her own even there. “And trees. And near the ocean.”

“Sounds perfect.” You chuckle, shaking your head, because this _will_ end, someday, and you will have all the time in the world to just _be_.

She burns the toast and you realize that you put the jam in the freezer rather than the fridge yesterday, so you end up eating cold Chinese takeout for breakfast and laughing over the comics.

You feel at home, at peace, and the new, different smell becomes the normal smell, in your head.

* * *

[September 2nd, 1997]

“There’s a baby, Remus.” Dora is quiet, nervous, and her voice shakes like you’ve never seen it do before. “There’s a baby, Remus, and they’re ours and…”

Your mouth opens and closes silently, so you open your arms, hoping to give her the largest bit of comfort you can. She burrows her head into your chest, almost as if trying to disappear into you, and you wish you could do the same, melt into her until both of you never feel anything but safe and loved.

“What are we going to do?” She asks, her voice barely raising above a whisper, and the words seem to pulse in the air to the time of your heartbeats. “We’re in the middle of a war, and…”

“James and Lily were too.” You find your voice somewhere deep in your chest, tucked between your heart and your ribcage, and you sound much stronger than you feel. Maybe this is the power of love, you think, as you fight to keep standing despite your weak knees and the pounding drum in your chest, the ability to be strong for someone else when you can barely stand yourself. “And Harry’s alright.”

“James and Lily are dead.” She remarks, voice soft, and you manage a sliver of a smile.

“Then let’s make sure we won’t be.” You reply and she laughs, even though it hardly sounds like one.

* * *

[October 21st, 1997]                                                            

“My jacket doesn’t fit.” She says one afternoon, as she returns from work, hanging the leather jacket she’s worn for years on the hook by the door. And you shrug, because that is her decision to make and you have no input to give. “God, it’s going to be ages before I can wear that again, huh?”

You pause for a second before stripping off your sweater, a scarlet one with a gold R on the front that Molly Weasley knitted you last Christmas, and toss it over to her. “You can wear this until then.”

“You trying to convert me, Lupin?” She smirks, but tugs your sweater on anyway. “You know it looks better on me.”

“Everything does.” You shrug, and she smiles.

Neither of you miss the way her usually pink hair shifts to your sandy brown curls for just a second.

* * *

[November 18th, 1997]

“It’s a boy”, she says over lunch, and you are amazed. You’ve hardly given a thought to anything but the fact that there is a child, let alone a name, and you break out the mythology books without question that very afternoon. She smiles when you flip to the pages about constellations and reads the stories aloud with you, and neither of you ask who you thought of first when you saw “stars” in the section title.

“Do you miss him?” She asks later, when you have both gotten into bed, and you don’t respond, because you are not sure if she wants to hear the answer.

“Sirius is a good name for a boy.” She whispers, and you shake with silent laughter because Merlin’s beard, why would you ever name your son after an ex-boyfriend?

“Sirius is a horrible name. It’s the only reason Harry’s name isn’t Sirius James Potter.” A tiny fragment of a laugh escapes at the end of your statement and there are tears in her eyes and neither of you can stop. Andromeda comes in to tell you off like you’re teenagers staying up too late and finds you with your hands tight around each other’s upper arms, laughing like there has never been anything funnier than Sirius James Potter in the entire world.

* * *

[December 20th, 1997]

“Perseus.” Dora reads aloud and the baby kicks and kicks hard.

“Destroyer of Medusa and Savior of Andromeda.” You finish off the section header and Dora grabs your hand, placing it over her belly. “Someone’s fond of that, I think.”

“Edward Perseus Lupin.” She chuckles. “Better than anything we’ve had so far. A hero’s name for a little hero. A snake killer sounds pretty good about now, right?”

“Fine by me.” You press a kiss to her swelling belly and your son takes the opportunity to shove his foot in your face. “Mama’s boy.”

There is a softer kick next, almost as if he’s apologizing, and you realize that it may have been a hand all along, reaching out to touch you.

You won’t deny him that, you think, and you lie there with your face against her belly for the longest time.

* * *

[January 15th, 1998]

“He’ll have your eyes, I hope.” You have an arm around Dora, who is charming stars into the nursery's ceiling. The walls are all midnight blue, and Dora’s stars shine yellow against the backdrop, forming constellations against the ceiling. Dora’s eyes are a dark blue, when she makes no effort to change them, the color of the nursery ceiling.

“I hope he’ll have yours.” She says, and you blink in confusion. Your eyes are a dull brown, despite the pretty words that she throws around (amber, golden, perfect) and you don’t feel very handsome, but she seems to think you are. “Hidden treasure, you are.”

“Good thing I caught the right kind of pirate.” You roll your eyes and get a blinking star affixed to your nose for the rest of the day for your troubles.

* * *

[February 14th, 1998]

“If I get any bigger, I’m going to explode.” Dora sinks into a chair, sighing in gratitude. “Your son’s ridiculous, Rem.”

“He’s my son now that he’s causing trouble?” You raise an eyebrow, busy cooking dinner. “He seems to be yours when he’s doing good.”

“Exactly.” She grins. “His daddy’s a real bad boy. Have you met him?”

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” You say, sounding more like a professor than a teenage boy making a pact with his friends, and the reminder that you are the last of them strikes you full in the chest. You tense up, the world seeming to narrow to a thin tunnel in front of you, and you suddenly feel Dora’s arms wrapping around your waist.

“I think”, she begins cautiously, “that you are the bravest of them all.”

“Do you really?” You chuckle, shaking your head. “James, Sirius and Peter all died for what they believed in. I’m still here.”

“That’s exactly it.” She kisses a trail down the line of your spine. “You’re still here.”

* * *

[March 30th, 1998]

You slide into bed beside her and she turns around slowly, exhausted by sadness and stress. “Remus.”

“Dora. I…” You struggle for words because anything you say will be incredibly lacking in sentiment. “I got scared.” You sound like a little boy describing his fear of the dark rather than a man explaining why he’d tried to leave his family. His _family_. It won’t be just you and Dora anymore, in a few weeks. It’ll be you and Dora and little Ted.

“You came back.” She traces your scars, running her thumb over the ones that mar your face. “I meant what I said, you know. About you being the bravest of them all.”

“Not brave enough to name our son after, apparently”, you joke, and the resultant flash in her eyes means that you’ve made a mistake. You remember that same glint in silver eyes, so unlike hers, years and years before, when your world was hemmed in by walls of stone and red and gold hangings.

“Edward Remus Lupin.” She says, smiling softly. “In the hopes that he’ll always find his way home.”

“You’re home”, you want to say. “It’s you I’ve been looking for.”

But the words die in your chest, curling up and drying out like pressed flowers, and you lean your forehead against hers, trying to push the words through into her brain, where she can hold them forever.

“I love you too”, she says, gripping your shoulders as tightly as she can. “We can do this.”

“We’ll survive.” You say, closing your eyes. Maybe this is what James meant all those years ago, when he said that everyone is faced with a choice that dooms or redeems them. Maybe this is your choice, to stay rather than go. You are anxious to find out which path you’ve chosen, but that can wait until morning. “If anyone could, it’s us.”

* * *

[April 11th, 1998]

And here he is, you think as the cleaned bundle is handed to you, your little hero.

Dora smiles from the bed, sleepy and content all at once, and you rock him in your arms as she slowly succumbs to sleep.

He blinks up at you with your eyes, owlish and innocent, and you wipe a stray tear off his chubby cheek while he scrunches up his nose just like his mother does. His hair, sandy brown and curly like yours at birth, slowly turns pink and spiky as he looks about the room, and you laugh until he starts to cry.

You laugh because you feel none of the call in him that you do when around other wolves, but you’ll tell him later that it was because he made a funny face.

* * *

[May 2nd, 1998]

Teddy cries, small fists beating out the rhythm of his heart against the bars of his cribs as his hair switches between bright pink and sandy brown every second.

No one comes.

* * *

 [September 1st, 2009]

“Dad, Mum, hurry!” Edward Lupin, more often known as Teddy, who is nearly as tall as his mother at eleven, rushes headlong towards the brick wall. But, curiously enough to the station attendant who forgets it a second after, instead of crashing into it, he slides right through.

You sigh and take Dora’s hand, because if you are not fast enough, he is bound to be neck deep in something in seconds.

“Good thing we didn’t go with the hero name.” Dora quips, as Teddy leaves his trolley behind to make a beeline for his godfather, who waits off to the side in an effort to keep the attention off him. “He would have been a thousand times more trouble with it.”

“Somehow, I think we would have handled it.” You offer her a tired smile and she reciprocates, leaning into your arm as Teddy rushes back, hair glowing electric blue.

“Stop being gross.” He sticks out his tongue, looking incredibly like Sirius, and your breath catches for a second. “It’s like I can’t leave you two alone for a whole second before you start being… nasty.”

“Your dad’s quite a bad boy, Ted.” Dora winks and Teddy shudders, covering his eyes.

“Don’t ever talk to me again!” He practically yells, before shoving himself between them. “Except always do, ‘cause I’d get lonely.”

“We’ll write. Daily, if you want it.” Dora kisses the top of his head even as Teddy grimaces. “Uncle Neville will be there, if you need anything, so don’t be scared to go into his office.”

“Don’t even remind me.” Teddy scrunches up his face. “He’ll probably grade me hardest.”

“Only if you don’t pay attention.” You ruffle Teddy’s hair, wondering how you could have ever thought leaving him behind would solve anything, and he huffs in annoyance, eager to be an adult. You’d tell him not to grow up if he could, to live the coming seven years over and over again, but there will be no wars for his generation to fight, if you and Harry and any of the people left over have anything to say.

Teddy will grow old, get married and maybe give you a few grandchildren, in time.

Maybe they will be named for heroes, you wonder, as your eleven year old son blows his nose into a corner of his school robes.

Or maybe you should worry a little more about this one first.

“See you around, cub.” He grins at the joke that’s been passed back and forth between you since he’s been old enough to reply, and salutes smartly.

“See you around, daddy-o.” Harry helps him get his trunk onto the train and he leans nearly halfway out the window as the train pulls out of the station to wave.

“All grown up.” Dora sighs, threading her fingers through the gaps in between yours. “Look at him go.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you.” You smile, squeezing her hand.

“You played a pretty big part.” She squeezes back. “You do realize we have eleven years of pop culture to catch up on, right?”

“And we will do that, after I get a good nap.” You snort. “It’s going to be quiet around the house, now.”

“We’ll make some noise.” She winks and you fall in love.


End file.
